New figures released this week show there have been hundreds of complaints about a controversial chicken farm near Burnham-On-Sea – with the problem growing.
Campaigners are battling to force Newbridge Farm to make changes amid ongoing problems with extreme smells coming from the premises during the breeding cycle.
Now, the Environment Agency has issued new figures which reveal the number of complaints about smells and noise at the site.
“We have received data from the Environment Agency about the calls made to their Incident Hotline complaining about Newbridge Farm between 21st March 2017 and 9th August 2018,” campaigner Ian Stanbury told Burnham-On-Sea.com this week.
“The figures make for very interesting reading. Of the total of 292 calls made in that period, 281 were about the odour and 11 were about noise.”
“240 of the calls (85%) reported ‘unacceptable’ levels of odour.”
“The average number of calls per month was 14.3 in 2017 and 21.7 in 2018 so far which is a 52% increase.”
He says that the figures are more damning evidence of the scale of the problem at the site.
“The figures are particularly satisfying because they show that our campaign is working and more complaints are being made about the odour (and noise) from Newbridge Farm,” adds Ian.
The table of figures for odour reporting is shown below, with the scale of odour intensity from 0 to 6, where 6 makes people feel nauseous or physically sick. The scores of 10 and ‘BAD’ are rated as a six.
